While the top 3 were making the semifinals of Madrid last week, the conspicuous missing fourth is Andy Murray. To be sure, Murray's weakest surface is clay. Murray's flatter style often leads to more errors. His opponent's high kicking spin can give him trouble. Still, he reached the semis of Monte Carlo after a slumping
Didn't expect this. Robin Soderling didn't have a particularly good Indian Wells. He lost to Phillipp Kohlschreiber in the 3rd round. This was one indication that Soderling wasn't on top of his game and that del Potro would have a good shot of beating Soderling. Before del Potro was injured, he used to play Soderling
Now there's a name we haven't heard in a while. James Blake was once a top ten player, someone who came back from scoliosis (affecting his spine) where had to wear a back brace for most of a day, then from shingles and the death of his father. His ranking has since dropped, and he
Last year, the US lost in the first round to Serbia at Serbia. Losers of the first round in Davis Cup must qualify to stay in the World group, so later in the year, US had to go down to Colombia to play on clay. Mardy Fish pulled the rare triple, winning both his singles
For a guy ranked nearly 200, Bernard Tomic is fairly well-known. Still only 18, Tomic has both excited and exasperated his Aussie fanbase. For a guy as tall as Tomic (6'4", possibly taller), he has a versatile game that some compare to Andy Murray. Tomic can slice off both sides, and often does. His slices
Sometimes, during a Slam, you'll see seeds do really well on the first day, then seeds struggle on the second day. Federer and Djokovic had an easy day, so clearly Murray, Nadal, and Soderling had to show them up. And they did. Both Murray and Nadal's opponents retired. Nadal was up 6-0, 5-0 when his
Currently, Soderling has 5580 points to Andy Murray's 5760 which means Soderling is 180 points behind Murray. With Soderling's win at Brisbane, he will replace a quarterfinal result in Marseille worth 45 points with a 250 point win or a net of 205 points, and just move ahead of Andy Murray. This means, with both
The circumstances were quite different last year. Davydenko was coming off a win at the ATP World Tour Finals. Nadal had not won a title in about half a year, but was playing good aggressive tennis to start the year. Federer was playing, well, he has lost the US Open to del Potro and lost
Last year, at this time, Nikolay Davydenko was coming off a great end of 2009 and looking to continue his winning ways in 2010. He had been on a hot streak, winning Kuala Lumpur, winning in Shanghai over Djokovic and Nadal, and winning the year-end championship beating Nadal, Federer, and del Potro, the three Slam
The big news is that Andy Murray, defending champ of Valencia, lost in 3 sets to Juan Monaco. Murray has lost to Monaco before, but on clay. He did mention that, due to his brother's wedding (last week), he wasn't as prepared as he had hoped to be. He is now pinning his hopes on
